State Cuts Plans But Says Muck Removal To Aid Lake

July 6, 1986|By Katherine Long of The Sentinel Staff

KISSIMMEE — Rich, black lake muck looks like the kind of stuff that would make your tomatoes grow like crazy, swallow your shoes or permanently soil your clothes. And in this case, looks are not deceiving. While shoe-swallowing and clothes-staining are not in demand, muck could make a desirable fertilizer for citrus growers and other farmers.

That is the plan for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, now preparing to remove up to 6,000 dump trucks of dried-out muck during the spring drawdown of Lake Tohopekaliga.

The agency is banking on $130,000 to scoop the muck off the bottom of Lake Tohopekaliga. The money is coming from the Department of Environmental Regulation and the South Florida Water Management District.

If area farmers and grove owners will take the muck, the transportation and dumping costs would be cut considerably.

Until now, Game and Fish Commission officials did not know how much money they would get or how far it would go in the pilot muck-removal project, the first of its kind ever tried on a lake the size of Tohopekaliga, which is about 22,000 acres.

They now say they will be able to scrape up to 95,000 cubic yards, or 64 acres, of dried-out sediments from three sites, mostly in the southern end of Lake Tohopekaliga bordered by cow pastures. The work will begin in February.

It's half the amount the commission hoped it would be able to remove when the project first was proposed earlier this year. The number 180,000 cubic yards was used at that time.

But biologists still say the removal will be effective.

Muck causes a complex set of problems. For one, it inhibits fish breeding because fish cannot 't breed in muck -- they need a sandy lake bottoms. It also may be causing an increase in the number of pesky blind mosquitoes, also called aquatic midges. And it cuts off the shallow water to tiny fish and small creatures that serve as the beginning of the lake's food chain.

Ed Moyer, a biologist with the Game and Fish Commission, said muck is building up a second shoreline and cutting off shallow areas to young fish.

''Fish get trapped behind this berm,'' Moyer said.

When the second shoreline is removed, 5.3 miles of the 40-mile shoreline will be opened up to fish.

Muck is the buildup, over a number of years, of lake plants that have flourished, fertilized by sewage effluent dumped into Lake Tohopekaliga.

Moyer said each acre of shallow water produces 100 pounds of tiny fish, snails and microscopic organisms that are extremely important in the food chain, providing meals for birds and sport fish.

There are about 22 species living in the shallows of Lake Tohopekaliga, and about a third of them are unknown to all but biologists, Moyer said.